Far right bingo card: Representing the working class

It seems ridiculous to me for anyone on then right wing of politics to claim to represent the working class. The right has always been about exploitation, about keeping us, the riff raff in our place and about squeezing every last drop of profit from us that they can get away with. That’s why the working class has always opposed the right – because it’s the right that uses our hard work to enrich others. This was obvious once but over the years the inequalities of life have become so normalised, so expected that many people think they’re inevitable. But they’re not.

Why should it be inevitable, for example that business owners can earn hundreds of thousands a year whilst their employees survive on subsistence wages?

Why should it be inevitable that these same business owners pay so little tax whilst their employees cannot access the public services they need because the country hasn’t the funds to provide for them?

Why is it that the people who do the hard work, put in the long hours for minimum wage, aren’t the ones who see the rewards from their labours?

These are the questions that the left want addressed and that’s why socialist parties insist upon better wages for working people. Thast’s why we demand proper taxation strategies to ensure that those at the top of the income ladder pay something toward helping those at the bottom. After all – they’re not the only people who invest in businesses.

As the late, great, Tony Benn once remarked…

“Your people invest their money… My people invest their lives.”

When the right wingers oppose the left they’re not doing so on behalf of the working class – they’re undermining us.

When the right wing oppose brown people or Muslims, Poles or LBQT citizens they’re not supporting the working class – they’re dividing it. This is the strategy of the cynical ‘man’ at the top of the tree. He knows that a united working class could easily force him to accept a fairer system so he works hard to keep us at each-others’ throats. And the stupid little neoNazi with his EDL tattoo or his Britain First mug spreading hatred between working people of different races or creeds is part of that machinery of oppression.

The real enemy of the working class is the wealthy tax avoider with his offshore account who leeches funds earned by our labour out of the only economy that could help improve our situations.

When you give tax relief to working people they spend it – that money goes back into the economy and other businesses prosper, local traders and local employees start to feel more confident and their money circulates. Everyone gets wealthier. When you give it to the rich banker he just puts it with the rest of his unnecessary pile in the Cayman Islands and forgets about it.

The far right claim to represent the working class whilst supporting right-wing policies and policy-makers such as our present government whose ministers gorge themselves whilst ordinary people are forced into destitution. Our conservative ‘masters’ vote to reduce benefits payments for the most needy and yet give themselves a ten grand bonus just for staying at home. When you support these nest-featherers you do not represent the working class.

The right wing has normalised its abuses so much that many of our own people think it’s inevitable that working peoples’ children should go hungry over Christmas and that a 10% tax cut for millionaires is just how it ought to be. Even the most obviously weak excuses don’t demonstrate just how badly they’re being played by a cynical financial elite.

And they call us ‘cucks’!

These people don’t represent the working class – they undermine it by falling for the divide and conquer politics of those who purport to be our ‘betters’. And in doing so they maintain the very system that treated them so unfairly and made them so very angry in the first place.

They’re on the wrong side and they don’t even know it!

My people: A house divided

A house divided against itself will not stand!

The working class needs to come together. You may have voted for this shameful Tory government and enabled a brutal Tory Brexit that benefits only the super rich but you’re still one of us. We need to stop fighting each other and unite against our common enemy.

The conservative party has never cared for you, your rights or your quality of life. We have what we have only because generations of working people were prepared to stand up as one. Now is the time for us to do the same before we lose everything they sacrificed so much to give us.

Lincoln YMCA: A validating environment

This weekend I went to Lincoln, a city I first visited during my homeless days back in the 1980s. It gave me a chance to meet some old friends and make a video combining my two main passions… Left wing politics and social/mental health care. What’s not to like?

Jenky MP: Promises versus reality

JenkyMark Jenkinson MP entered the House of commons as Member of Parliament for Workington on 13th December 2019. He cruised to victory in the 2019 General election, partly because of Brexit and partly on the back of promises and pledges he made. Promises which have been saved for posterity in his election address. Promises which we can refer to when assessing his honesty. Promises which provide a framework to determine just how much he really cares about the circumstances of those people who elected him.

So what were these promises? According to Jenky’s printed election address he was going to…
Support our NHS
Invest in schools
Increase police and support tougher sentencing
Support businesses and jobs
Improve infrastructure
Support town centres

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To date Jenky has not voted against the government even once. This seems remarkable enough in itself for anyone who claims to have integrity. The work of this callous government seems so far removed from that of decent, caring human beings that opposition is a duty, not just a choice.

Mark Jenkinson_1We’ve already noted that Jenky voted against the rights of working people – hardly a positive move on behalf of a working class community like ours.

We know that he voted to abandon unaccompanied refugee children – one of the most callous decisions British politics has seen for decades.

19530663_303.jpgWe know that he, along with every other Tory MP, voted to disempower the House of Commons and remove the HoC’s right to scrutinise government proposals. This was the first move in Boris’ increasing journey toward Dictatorship.

Now let’s see what else he’s been up to since he entered Parliament. Use these two links to confirm all that follows…

Public whip

They work for you

On the NHS and Social care

It’s no secret that there is a funding crisis in health and social care, largely as a result of Tory and Liberal Democrat underfunding since 2010. Jenky and his tory mates had the chance to vote to change all that by voting to provide adequate funding – funding that currently goes to the most wealthy in tax cuts. Given Jenky’s commitment to support the NHS you’d have thought he’d be happy to be one of the people supporting this motion. Alas, no. On January 16th he voted to deny both services the basic funding they would need to start to rebuild their efficiency. So much for that promise.

Boris party of the NHS

Not only that, on Feb 4th 2020 he voted to scrap government responsibility for targets and monitoring and to prevent further funds being made available to the Health Service. He even voted to let the Health secretary avoid making an annual statement on health funding. That should help hide the Tory party’s appalling under-funding of the NHS from here on in, shouldn’t it?

On police

Police passing out paradeIt was January 29th when Jenky voted to refuse the extra funding necessary to fulfil his pledges about more and better policing. Remember that this is the guy who said the Government’s majority meant they could do everything they want to – and he was right. So why won’t they do what they promised to? Could it be because they didn’t mean it? Could it be that Jenky’s own voting record shows that he doesn’t care about honouring his pledges to his electorate either?

On rights

On January 8th Jenky voted against maintaining protections for working people post Brexit. This is interesting because during the election campaign he stated categorically that EU standards for working peoples’ rights were merely a minimum (which is true), that UK rights provisions exceed them and there is no plan to reduce that provision of rights for workers. Why then did he vote to detach us from the minimum that we apparently plan to exceed anyway? Could it be that there really is a plan to reduce our rights still further? After all, that would be in keeping with the erosion of rights that has already been the hallmark of Tory policy for a decade.

Human rights

On January 20th Jenky voted against reversing austerity and against clamping down on tax avoidance. On the same day he voted against measures intended to extend full employment rights to all workers, to end in-work poverty and to introduce a real living wage. It’s almost as though he doesn’t care about working class communities or the ‘Workington man’ who voted for him.

On homelessness

Jenky voted against providing the relatively small amount of money needed to end homelessness, a problem that has grown several-fold under the Tories throughout the last 10 years of ideologically driven austerity.

Two weeks later he had the audacity to ask a question in the house about help for veterans, a group disproportionately affected by the very homelessness that he refused to eradicate.

This is the hypocrisy of Mark Jenkinson MP.

A grim future

Jenky and all the other newly elected Tory MPs who now represent the former ‘Red wall’ constituencies may well have been elected on the back of a Brexit promise but British politics is and always has been about much more than just one, single issue. Similar articles (indeed almost exactly the same article) could be written about them all – so slavishly do they tow the party line.

Together they are destroying the working class communities of Britain.
They are destroying the communities they claim to represent.
They are destroying the livelihoods of the voters who trusted them.

New tory MPs 2019

It was bad before but it’s even worse now. Boris’ huge majority in the house means he can get away with anything he wants to – or rather his handler, Dominic Cummings can. There’s nothing we can do about that for the moment though – the die is cast and we’ll just have to hang on and weather the ideological storm – a storm that will make Thatcher’s 1980s look like a walk in the park.

So please remember these betrayals, remember the voting records of hypocrites like Jenky and let’s kick them out in 2024.

Let’s take our democracy back from these hypocritical liars and con artists!

Working class: “Know your place”

What does equality of opportunity actually look like? It is not enough to say that the same rules apply to everyone and think that it’s fair. If those rules involve working for free for years just to get a start on your chosen career path then no matter how gifted they may be, many working class hopefuls will never break through that glass ceiling. Children who may be just as gifted (or otherwise) as their middle and upper class counterparts and yet whose parents simply can’t afford it.

It’s not easy to meet your child’s, let alone your childrens’ living expenses in one of our major cities with no income and no guarantee of a job at the end of it. And this on top of the expense of pursuing their university degree and all that that entails.

This is not equality – it’s just another, silent system that keeps working class people ‘in their place’. This is how we come to know our station in life, just as surely as did the teenagers, the ‘baby boiler makers’ who were sold by the workhouses to the mills and the factories in 19th century England. The glass ceiling may not be so dramatic today but it’s just as real.

And it needs to change.